Presenting....... Banarville

Headed over to help the parents power wash and reseal the driveway today. This means playing trains and taking more pictures. This is the last picture for tonight's posting. This are is one of my favorite places on the layout.

Attached files

 

A better view of the room itself with the Train Board down. The layout Board outside dimensions are 4'6"front to back and 6'6" wide as it sits on top of my bed.

Attached files

 

A closer look at the inner workings on the pulley system. We used standard clothes line and single whip blocks. This is the original line from the 1970's. It cranks with very little effort to align the tracks up so the locomotives can reach in and take a string of cars out.

Attached files

 

While at the Parents house today, I took new pictures in hopes that they would come out straight.....I hoped wrong. So sorry for making people look crooked, work in progress.

This the best area overview that I was able to get. The room is only 8'10 wide and 9'10" from the door to the window. This seems to fit in with a lot of the other layouts other people have in their small rooms.

Attached files

 

A switcher pulling a string of cars over the 32" bridge track from the corner into the layout. The bridge track is common baseboard, as stated before, that is sturdy enough to handle much heavier locos and cars- but we like the little guys doing the grunt work.

Due to the track configuration, we only really like to run 4 axle locos through the tight curves and close scenery. We have run 6 axle locos, but they need to have the front/ back steps altered to clear on some sections. Altering is not fun or right, so we stay with smaller locos. They work just as well. Steam engines have no problems navigating any part of the layout or fetching cars to and from the cabinet. Dad will not seem to give back my three ACL 0-6-0, little steamers, pictured in the open cabinet. Broadway makes great running steamers, imho.

Attached files

 

The cabinet with all of the access doors open. The dimensions on this are 4' wide x 3'9" tall and 4" deep. The top two doors hide the locos and crank rod workings. The middle door is very seldom ever used, and due to its size, required a resting spot on the left side of the cabinet (little L bracket) Lastly, the bottom door hides the connecting tracks and shelves. The five shelves are mounted on a panel that slides in a 1/4 inch slot in the sides of the cabinet. We have never met another working display case of this nature or design. Maybe someone else has done one, but not to my knowledge.

Watching a lot of videos of people making small layouts prompted me to share, just like they had. Mostly after watching videos on the cassette yards- if I got the name right...horizontal sliding fiddle/ hump yards.

Attached files

 

Welcome to a night shot of downtown Banarville. A few homes, St Pete's church, town gazebo and City Hall.

Attached files

 

Another view of the town.

Attached files

 

Last post for this round. Notice that we do ballast the tracks, just simply nailed to the cork roadbed. This is the second track configuration, we learned a lot with the first one. The flex of the layout, when lowered or raised, made it absolutely impossible to keep ballast in place. Hours of gluing and fussing would all start to be undone in one lift. This is okay, no more gluing Little Rock's- switches work perfectly- no more vacuuming back of the layout- can clean track without the need to be careful of ballast. We put our efforts into other items.

Attached files